Broken Minded

Prologue

I've grown used to it now.

Not having just my thoughts in my head.

It's almost like a voice in my head; it's not a conscience, because the voice is all on its own, lost and unfollowed and completely irrelevant to mine. Because that voice isn't mine. It's another persons. It's new persons voice everyday...it's been a year.

It all started three days after Lexi Montpen's death, at her funeral, but the thing is, I can barely remember the details, and I remember even less about Lexi. Just like everyone else in the whole school and the community of Tate, I was planning to attend that funeral and play the I-was-Lexis-friend-and-she-always-had-on-this-shining-smile shit everyone else plays after an outcast dies at school, suddenly and abruptly. The thing is that was all Lexi Montpen was; an outcast thrown away, looked down upon, who sat in the corner of the lunch room or sometimes was caught eating the school's barely edible lunch in a place and situation that wasn't at all appitizing. And from what I can remember Lexi Montpen was't all that bad--because they never are. And now, a girl who was never truly appreciated, who was always alone, got her popularity; about 500 people were attending that widespread and peculiar funeral only to play pretend or put their sympathy for the already widowed Mrs.Montpen.

The funeral was at the Fellowship of Christ Church in the south side of Tate; it was this big ass church that had room for at least all the towns population and a couple of the dainty tourists who visited Tate for its county-famous saltwater taffee and the quaint beach nearby. I had sprouted out of a grey mini-van in a scratchy dress and too much mascara. My mother, who had been too terribly focoused was in a rush for something. She was constantly checking the mirrors and her patience had shrunk from slim to none. As I unbuckled the seat belts and held tight to my food luggage, I came to the conclusion that this felt more like a school activity than an actual funeral. Everyone showed up in their dullest, blackest clothing, and there was the smell of quickly put together cassaroles and soups and ready-mix baked brownies wrapped carelessly in old tinfoil in the air. I myself, as I was walking into the service was carrying a crock pot of canned chicken soup, like Lexi Montpen was sick or something and like my mom thought she could fool everybody by putting Campbells in a pot and inderectlt portraying that she had made it herself.

The soup was watery, tasteless and the vegetables were rubbery. But for all it mattered, as I placed the pot amosngst a sea of food, I realized Mrs.Montpen would probably appreciated it.

We all sat down in the chairs and waited for the service to begin. I smoothed down my skirt and cleared my throat; for the remainder of the time waiting I was listening to some random ABBA song through the earbuds that were cleverly placed up my black sweater, while quiety sucking on a sour-flavored icebreaker mint.

When the service finally began, and Mrs.Montpen pulled out and we saw the sadness in her eyes and the fakeness in her plastered and rolled out smile most of us straightened up and turned off our phones, finally showing true respect. It hit us then; Lexi Montpen was dead. She was gone. And for most of us, she was meerly a memory.

_

In some ways the funeral was kind of classic. A big picture of Lexi was placed in the middle, enframed by a crown of daisies and callalilies and some other flowers. She looked at least thirteen, with bubblegum colored braces sticking out from her teeth that she had gotten taken out at least two years before. It was definently an old picture. It was probably her best picture because at that point Lexi looked happy. So bubbly and unmistakably happy. So much, that in fact there was no question about it because her wide grin was sending the same message as her eyes. And for once, in that captured moment, Lexi wasn't at all lying. In that moment she hadn't plastered on a fine persona, when inside she was really crippling.